Whispers of Heaven (20 page)

"Jesus, Mary, Joseph, and all the Saints,"
he whispered, holding out his candle so that the light flickered over a gleaming frozen waterfall rendered in brilliant, translucent stone, ranging in color from clear to white streaked with yellow and orange and brown.

She came to stand beside him, and the beauty of this place, of this moment, became something they shared, something intimate and memorable. "So? Is this something to see, Mr. Gallagher, or what?"

He stared down at her. She stood hugging herself with one arm thrown across her breast, her hand clutching her opposite shoulder. She turned in a slow pirouette, her own candle held high. She'd managed to get a smudge of dirt on one pale cheek, and her hair was coming down in little stray wisps. No one seeing her now, he thought, would ever take her as being either haughty or unapproachable. He watched her lips part on a sigh of pleasure, watched her eyes widen in awe, and knew it again, that swift rush of dangerous emotion that caught at his chest and stole his breath. "It's something to see, all right," he said, his voice coming out rough.

She glanced up at him, and a sudden shiver quivered through her body, hard enough to make her shudder.

"You're cold," he said, turning away to nest his candle, carefully, in a crevice beside them.

She shook her head. "No. I'm all right."

"Here, take my coat," he said, stripping it off.

"But you'll get cold yourself."

"I'm used to the cold." He held it out to her.

Her mouth trembled into a smile. "All right. Thank you," she said, and reached for the coat.

Her hand closed over his, and the shock of it, the burning ignition of that simple, unexpected touch, flared up between them. He felt it in his flesh, in his blood, in his being. And God help him, she must have felt it, too, because he saw her eyes widen, her chest rising as she sucked in a gasp of air and stepped back quickly—too quickly, for the stone floor of the cavern was smooth and damp and slippery. He heard her give a faint mew of alarm, saw her lurch sideways as her feet shot out from beneath her.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN

Lucas lunged forward, his fingers digging into the soft flesh of her arms as he caught her just above her elbows and jerked her to him. She slammed into his chest, her candle tumbling into darkness, her hands clutching wildly at his shirtfront, her eyes wide and startled. But her momentum was too great. She simply pulled him over with her.

"Bloody hell," he yelped, twisting his body as they fell, his hip striking the cold stone first, then his shoulder, then his back. "Bloody hell," he swore again, and heard her start to laugh.

They rolled together in a tangle of arms and legs and mingling laughter that echoed about the ancient chamber. Rolled until she came to rest flat on her back, with him on top of her. He was laughing still when he raised himself up on his elbows and gazed down at her. Then the laughter died on his lips.

She had her head tipped back, her neck arching white and tempting, her eyes almost squeezed shut as her body convulsed with her own laughter. He was suddenly, achingly aware of the long line of her legs pressed intimately to his, of the delicate strength of her lady's hands clenching his shoulders, of the hot rush of unbidden desire that swelled within him, stealing his breath and bringing his body to instant hardness.

And then he realized she wasn't laughing anymore, the smile on her face fading slowly as her gaze caught his, and held. The strained hush of their breathing hung heavy in the air. It was as if his world had narrowed until it consisted of nothing but the golden flicker of candlelight and the pungent scent of cold wet stone, and this woman. This woman, beneath him.

He saw her lips part, felt her breasts lift against his chest as she drew in breath, felt her hands quiver at his neck in a movement that was almost but not quite a caress. A strange silence opened up between them, a silence filled with the drip of water and flare of soft candlelight and the dangerous lure of the forbidden. She had the most beautiful eyes, he thought. Eyes set deep and wide, and dark now with unmistakable desire. For one, unguarded moment, he fell into them.

His head dipped, his lips hovering no more than a breath away from hers, his gaze held fast by hers. It would have been the most natural thing in the world for him to simply lower his head and kiss her. If he had been anyone else, he would have done it. But he was a convict groom,
her
convict groom, damn it, doomed to a life of servitude and disgrace or an early death, while she was... who she was.

He rolled away from her and sat up, his back to her, his head bowed as he sought to bring his ragged breathing and raging desires under control.

"You were right," she said, her voice echoing queerly in the vast, primeval chamber around them.

He swung his head to look at her over his shoulder. She sat with her knees bent to one side, her hands folded together and pressed beneath her chin. In the faint light of the remaining candle, her face looked pale, her eyes dark and huge, her lips swollen and full, as if from a lover's kisses. The memory of what had happened between them—and what had almost happened—pounded through him, taunted him, tormented him. Tempted him. "What was I right about, then?" he asked harshly.

He watched, surprised, entranced, as a strange smile curled her lips. "This wasn't such a good idea."

"I think we need to be talking about this."

Jessie turned her head to look at him across the jumble of wet-dark rocks and sun-dappled, frothy white water that separated them. He stood on the near bank of the fast-flowing stream, his legs braced wide in that intensely masculine way he had, his hands resting on his slim hips. There was a small waterfall here, a white veil of roaring water that threw up a fine, cooling mist to drift through the rainforest rising steep and densely green around them in a tangle of towering, smooth-barked trees and leafy ferns and lush creepers.

After leaving the cave she had climbed out here, to the middle of the stream, to sit on one of the big boulders that had tumbled down from the mountain and bathe her face in the clear water. To bathe her face and tidy her hair and put some distance between them while she tried to come to terms with what had just happened—or rather, had almost happened— in the dark, secret depths of that cave.

She had thought she could control the impossible, unbidden, unwanted attraction she had developed for this man, for this rough, rebellious Irishman, for this
convict,
God help her. She had thought she could control
herself.
But nothing she had experienced thus far in life had prepared her for the wondrous shock of finding herself pinned beneath the hard strength of his man's body, or for the sweet temptation that shimmered in the air when his lips hovered above hers. She had known such a swift rush of want, such a wild yearning, such an aching need, that she hadn't been able to control it, hadn't been able to hide it.

And neither had he.

She had seen the hard look of arousal sharpening his features, seen the hunger in his eyes, felt the quivering need in his body as he gazed down at her. He had wanted her, wanted her with a fierceness that both frightened and excited her. And she wondered, now, if there had ever been a time when he hadn't been aware of her in that way a man is aware of a woman. For the awareness had been there, surely, in the heart-stopping intensity of his smile, in the smoldering fire l hat lit up his eyes whenever he looked at her—a fire that warmed her belly and stole her breath and robbed her of any reflection except forbidden, sinful thoughts of him.

He had come so close, so close to dipping his head and tasting what he surely knew she was willing to give. But he hadn't done it, because no man in his situation would. Not even such a wild, mad Irishman as he.

She curled her fingers around the damp stone at her sides, the sharp edge biting into her flesh. She had thought— hoped—that they might be able to go on as they had before, simply pretending that dangerous moment in the cave had never occurred, pretending that this—this
thing
between them, whatever it was, wasn't really there. She had forgotten that he wasn't like her, that he believed in brutal honesty, whatever the cost, that he didn't play by her society's rules.

"In my world, we don't speak of such things," she said, her voice so hushed that it was almost drowned out by the roar of the water and the incessant
creek-creek
of unseen frogs. "Anything awkward, or even slightly untoward, we simply behave as if it never happened."

"Is that what you want?"

She looked at his fierce, high-boned face, with its dark, compelling eyes and hard mouth, and felt something crack inside her. She sucked in a deep breath, as if that might somehow ease the pain, although she was beginning to fear this was one pain that was only going to keep getting worse and worse. "Nothing did happen. I fell and you caught me. That's all." And then she said it again, as if saying it could make it so. "Nothing happened."

"Dia,
you're right." He crossed the stream toward her, his gray convict coat flaring open, his gaze never leaving her face as he leaped nimbly from one rock to the next. "You're right," he said again, pausing on one of the huge boulders that loomed over her, so that she had to tilt back her head to look up at him. "Nothing happened. Nothing's been happening since that first day, when you saw me splitting rocks in your brother's quarry. Nothing happened when you watched me work that crazy Irish stallion you bought, or when we rode along the beach of Shipwreck Cove. But if we're not bloody careful,
something's
going to happen, one day soon. And then there will be hell to pay. For me, and for you."

She dropped her gaze to her hands, clasped fast now in her lap. "Warrick is petitioning the governor to grant you a full pardon, for saving me from the bushrangers. Once that's granted, you'll be able to go away from here." It was what she wanted, for him to go away, far, far away. It was what she wanted, yet the mere thought of it shifted the pain within her, made it strike deeper, sharper. "You'll be able to leave then. We need never see each other again."

"It won't be granted."

"The petition?" She watched him step down to a rock, his back held straight and taut, his face turned half away from her. "You can't know that."

"Can't I?"

A fearful suspicion seized her, wouldn't let her go. "Why were you transported?"

One corner of his mouth crooked up in a smile that deepened that sinfully attractive crease in his cheek without quite warming his eyes. "For belonging to an illegal society."

"Did you?"

He kept his gaze fixed on the opposite bank. "Among other things."

"I can't see them denying you a pardon," she said quietly, "simply because of that."

"No."

She gazed at him, at his hard profile, at the gentle rise of his chest as he drew in air, and felt a desperate need to know more about him, to understand him better. "Is it because of why you were flogged?"

She expected him to resent the question, but he only shrugged. "Which time? A man can get fifty lashes for insubordination, or twenty-five simply for swearing."

"The bad one."

There was a brief, perceptible pause, filled with the roar of the water and the harsh screech of a black cockatoo from deep in the forest. "Oh, that one." He brought up one hand to settle his hat lower on his forehead. "That was when I took it into my head to kill this particular overseer."

"Why?"

He let out a harsh laugh. "Because I'm a bloody-minded brute of an Irishman, of course."

"No you're not."

"No? Well, when I first arrived, I was assigned to the regimental stables in Hobart. The men there, they don't have a very flattering opinion of those of us from the Emerald Isle."

Jessie swallowed, trying to clear the sudden lump of emotion that had risen in her throat. She'd heard about the way the men in the regiment could treat convicts, particularly the Irish ones.

"They had this rule," he said, "that convicts were only allowed to receive one letter every two months."

"That's inhuman."

He glanced at her over his shoulder, his expression hard, almost hostile. "We're here to be punished, remember? Not coddled. The overseer there, he said that so many times, I can't see an egg to this day, without thinking of him."

She watched, surprised and oddly touched, as a brief flare of humor lightened his features. "He was a big, ugly brute of an Englishman named Lamb. Leo Lamb." His gaze met hers for an instant of shared irony; then the smile faded into a look so bleak and haunted, it was all she could do to keep from reaching out to him in comfort. "That Leo Lamb, he had this thing about what they call 'special convicts,' the ones who know how to read and write, and who make the mistake of talking like their betters. He thought men like that needed to be humbled. He sure enough set about trying to humble me."

She curled her hands into fists, her fingernails digging into her palms. She knew something about the ways an overseer could make a man's life hell. Such as seeing a man get twenty-five lashes for an inappropriate smile...

"He was at me day and night, giving me the worst jobs, taunting me, trying to make me crack. But I was determined he wasn't going to get to me."

"So what happened?" she asked, her voice coming out torn.

"A letter came for me one day. A letter in a black-edged envelope."

Oh, God,
Jessie thought, her heart aching for him, for a black-edged envelope meant a death notice.

"Only thing was," he continued, "it hadn't been the required two months since my last letter had arrived, so he burned it. Right in front of me."

He paused, his head tipping back, the cords of his throat working as he swallowed. "I knew that someone I loved had died. But I didn't know who. I went... a little crazy. I didn't kill him. But I probably would have if they hadn't pulled me off him in time. They sentenced me to a year in the chain gangs. And three hundred lashes."

"Whose was it?"

He swung his head to look at her, his eyes wide and a little wild. "What?"

"The death notice. Whose was it?"

For a moment, she didn't think he was going to answer. Then he said, "Her name was Caroline. Caroline Reardon. She was to have been my wife. She died in childbirth."

The roar from the falls suddenly seemed too loud, the air so thick and damp, it hurt to breathe. "I'm sorry."

He shook his head. "Don't get me wrong. It wasn't my child she was carrying."

"She didn't wait for you?"

He was silent a moment, his head bowed, watching the white, frothy water swirl through the tumbled rocks at his feet. "I told her not to. After I was convicted and sentenced to be transported, I told her that she had to think of me as dead." He moved his foot, pushing at one of the smaller loose stones with the toe of his rough work boot until the stone rolled over with a splash. "She wouldn't listen to me, was furious with me for even suggesting it. She said she'd wait. Wait forever, if she had to."

"But she didn't."

He lifted his gaze to follow the length of the moss-covered trunk of a giant eucalyptus that thrust up from the far bank of the stream to rise thick and majestic some two to three hundred feet into the air. "She came to see me, not long before they were to load us on the transport that was to take us first to England, then here. She said she'd met a man who loved her, a man she thought she could be happy with, and she had wanted to tell me about him, to my face. She said she owed me that, although God knows, it wasn't an easy thing for her to do."

"Harder for you, I should think."

He leaned his back against the boulder beside her, his arms crossed at his chest, his face flat and unreadable and still turned half away from her. "I'd meant it, when I told her to think of me as dead. She had her own life to live. I didn't see any reason to destroy her life along with mine."

He was so close to her now, she could have reached out and touched him. She ached with the need to touch him, to comfort him. She watched as a slow, sad smile touched his lips. "She said she still loved me, that she would always love me. But she also said she'd come to realize that I'd never really loved her as much as she needed to be loved. She said if I'd loved her—if I'd truly loved her, loved her more than honor, more than life itself—then I wouldn't have done the things I did."